I like my goggles

My engineering ones are great, but they are nothing compared to my rose ones.

Now that I've admitted that I have no credibility and I'm completely biased, I accuse you of the same. Yes, you. You're a biased, lying, fact-distorting sack of stuff from kodos. Double that if you're from Blizzard. Admit it.

Arenas were a great idea. Competitive PvP with low time requirements and a system which would give more to the best, less to the worst, but no one is left behind. Sign me up. Then someone decided that there should be rating requirements. This is the downhill. You need gear to win, but you need to win to get gear. This is a perfect setup not only for a rich get richer scenario, but also hell for newcomers.

Do arenas even add anything to WoW? They add nothing to the story. They add no interesting new mechanics to figure out. We had a place for competitive PvP: the front of Orgrimmar. If you want groups, make a pre-made for AB. But it didn't work. I blame cross-realm BGs. Of course those were actually a great idea since unbalanced servers had gigantic queue times. That stemmed from an unwillingness to restrict server balances. Getting back to my point, before cross-realm BGs, especially on PvP servers, I remember serious PvP guilds. These guys were there to PvP. They'd dominate BGs, they'd burn down towns, they'd rise to defend their cities. We had competitive PvP before arenas. We knew who they were, who was the best and worst and all the in between.

What did arenas add? They threw people in a box and then gave everyone a number. It's the old competitive PvP, but stripped of all the interesting elements.

Oh, Blackrock Mountain, I miss thee. You were inevitable, but still spontaneous and surprising PvP. That's how to do world PvP. It's not about rewards, it's about getting us all in one space and letting the red text take over.

Unfortunately Blizzard now has over a year, tons of money, a lot of hype, and more than a few egos invested in arenas. Maybe someday they will dramatically alter arenas to make them less bad, but I doubt it will be soon. I hope they don't remove it entirely. The boxes have their uses, distributing gear is not a good one.